Team Herald
PANJIM: Denouncing the report prepared by the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) on Mhadei water diversion, the Congress on Saturday demanded that the government should submit a holistic study report of the effects of the Mhadei river diversion project to the
Supreme Court.
Addressing a press conference at the Congress office, here, South Goa MP Capt Viriato Fernandes voiced his serious concerns regarding a recent report on the controversial issue from the NIO.
The NIO report lacks proper ground truthing and fails to capture the real situation on the ground, he said.
Challenging the NIO report’s assertion that Goa would experience only minimal impact from water diversion at Mhadei, he pointed to four credible and exhaustive studies conducted by renowned researchers who are associated with Institutes like the Indian Institute of Science, the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology & the Environment (ATREE), Norwegian Institute for Water Research, and IIT Mumbai - all of which paint a starkly different picture.
These studies warn that diverting water from Mhadei could trigger catastrophic consequences, leading to the ultimate saline desertification of Goa, he added.
One of the most glaring oversights in the NIO report, prepared by only hydrologists and from the hydrology point of view, is its disregard for the non-monsoon flows from Mhadei.
The perennial flow of water from Kalasa and Bhandura are vital to maintain the evergreen forests. Ignoring these critical factors, especially in the context of global warming and environmental degradation, places our entire ecosystem - and our very way of life - at grave risk. It is west flowing rivers like Mhadei rising from the Western Ghats that carry the nutrients that nurture the wide variety of marine life and sea food abounding in Goa’s coastal waters, Capt Fernandes said.
The MP warned that if Kalasa and Banduri dams are built by Karnataka then it will reverse the flow of Mhadei water away from Bhimgad and Mhadei wildlife sanctuaries and forest in Maharashtra thereby affecting 500 sq km of biodiverse forest South West of Khanapur taluka in Karnataka.
Capt Fernandes informed that Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Bhupender Yadav had already written to him that the Centre is awaiting Goa’s proposal to declare Tiger Reserve. The constant sighting of tigers, leopards and black panthers in villages in the State is a wake-up call to the government to declare the Tiger Reserve.
He claimed that the Malaprabha river basin is surplus water and that a multinational company bottling soft drinks was using one lakh litres of water every day for its manufacturing plant at Hubbali.
“It’s a false narrative that Karnataka requires water to meet drinking needs of Hubbali and Dharwad. They are diverting water for surgarcane cultivation and sugarcane is water guzzler and we cannot allow Mhadei diversion to satisfy the greed of sugarcane cultivators,” Capt Fernandes said.
The Congress leader said that the studies conducted by renowned researchers will be submitted to the Chief Minister and the Mhadei Bachao Abhiyan (MBA) and to submit it to the Supreme Court.
Rivers possess their own natural flows and rhythms; they cannot be manipulated or partitioned as if they were mere sections on a map. Moreover, being a coastal river, the Mandovi, which serves as a lifeline for over 43% of Goa’s population, is particularly vulnerable to saline ingress. A reduction in water flow from Mhadei could spell disaster for both the communities as well as the biodiverse wildlife that share this fragile habitat. The proposed three dams by Karnataka pose an additional threat by potentially severing water access to vital wildlife sanctuaries of Mhadei in Goa and Bhimgad in Karnataka. Constructed on Eco-Sensitive Zones category 1, the cascading effects of the dams will jeopardise the essential flora, fauna and forest that underpin our food and water security and play such an important role in carbon fixing and arresting global warming.
The Congress also released a video on the effects of the Mhadei river diversion project, and it will be circulated across the world.
Capt Fernandes went a step ahead in appealing for unity across party lines and suggested to the Chief Minister to take all the 40 legislators and the three MPs to the Prime Minister to present Goa’s demand for saving river Mhadei.
Meanwhile, Mhadei Bachao Abhiyan (MBA) secretary Rajendra Kerkar said, “Three scientists of NIO have written this paper by studying rainfall data of the region and never visited the Mhadei region or took any look towards the wildlife sanctuaries of the Mhadei in Goa and Bhimgad in Karnataka. Installing pipelines, pump houses, construction of open cut channels and canals have already posed serious threat to the wildlife, ecology and forest in the region. These scientists have challenged even the yield calculation figure that was arrived by the Mhadei Water Dispute Tribunal and recorded in its final award.”
Save Goa Save Tiger convenor Rajan Ghate said, “Mhadei is a deficit river basin. Chief Minister is always claiming that Mhadei is his mother, but it is unfortunate that for the sake of his chair, the chief minister is helping the Centre. Karnataka has 28 MPs compared to two from Goa and Centre is always favouring bigger State Karnataka. All MPs from Karnataka come together for Mhadei. In Goa, Congress MP Capt Viriato Fernandes has not appealed to all MLAs and MPs from the State to come together to fight unitedly to protect Mhadei.”
Supreme Court lawyer Adv Bhavanishankar Gadnis, who represented the MBA in the Mhadei matter, said, “As per the last report of the PRAWAH, it appears that the Karnataka government is not ready to allow the Goa team for a site inspection in the Mhadei river basin. Therefore, the Goa government should now approach the Supreme Court by producing the final report of PRAWAH and appeal to the apex court to give its verdict. There is no need of any other report as it will further delay the matter. The two reports by Madhav Gadgil and Kasturirangan cover up everything.”
Meanwhile, the recent report by the CSIR–NIO will not affect Goa’s case in the Supreme Court regarding the Mhadei river water dispute, informed Chief Minister Pramod Sawant.
Speaking to reporters at Ponda on Saturday, Sawant stated that the State government had not commissioned the CSIR-NIO to conduct any research on the Mhadei river.
“If they (CSIR-NIO) have done it, they have done it on their own accord. We had not told them to prepare the report. The government has nothing to do with it. It will have no effect on our case,” he said.